We finally met our goal!

C’a ke bërë?

Alright so I finally got some pictures with some members. The picture of us all together is at the Kamëz branch building.

We have church in the first floor of a house. The oldest brother is Besmir and his two younger brothers are Ardit and Janus. Janus is the youngest and Ardit is in the middle.

Besmir with Elder Bullough

Ardit Janus We went over to their house yesterday for Bajrami which is a Muslim holiday. Ha ha it’s funny because this whole last month has been Ramazan which is where they are supposed to fast during the day and only eat at night and at the end of Ramazan, you have Bajrami which is where you basically just eat as much as you can all the time. =) Not many Albanians really truly keep Ramazan (although they use that as an excuse for why they can’t listen to us), but I’m pretty sure every single Albanian has no problem keeping Bajrami. Ha ha yeah so we went over there for lunch yesterday. It was way fun. I wish you guys could meet these members. They seriously are soooo good. No matter what, Besmir and his brothers are at church every single week. It’s gonna be kinda sad when I leave Kamëz.

And then there’s one picture of me and a chubby kid named Romeo. He is our pronari’s (landlord’s) son. Looks like me when I was about that age, huh? =)

Well I’m glad to hear that Bear is doing better. I was sad for him. Ha ha I miss him too! I can’t pet any of the dogs here and it’s weird! So the Webelos are doing good then? Oh man knots are the best. Ha ha there’s always that one who just can’t get it though which is always funny. =) So good luck with that! That’s so cool that you’re taking a Book of Mormon class! Is it like just a ward thing or is it like Institute or something? Where is it held? I’ll tell you what, I went to Institute one time with Kiersten and it was probably one of the coolest lessons I’ve ever been taught. So I’m betting that you are going to have a great time at that class. Do you get graded and everything? Ha ha that will be funny when you’re doing homework with Lindsey. That’s sweet, mom.

Holy cow I miss those family dinners. Ha ha where did you play croquet? On the hill? Me and Tim actually played on the hill once I think. It was interesting. How is Shawn doing? I’ll have to write him soon. I am a horrible writer, but we’ve had some extra time these past couple of P-days cause we haven’t had to go into Tirana so hopefully soon I can get a letter off to him. What’s his address? And yes I had Marisa in my class. Ha ha she is the funniest little girl ever. Tell her I said hi! And I had one of the Ross boys in my class and I want to say it was Dallin, but maybe it wasn’t. . . .I don’t know. But he was way awesome too. We had an awesome primary class for like the 4 weeks that I was there.

Well the mission’s going well. This week was really good. We finally met our goal for new investigators! We got 4 this week! It took us all the way till yesterday to do it, but by golly we did it! We are really excited for this one family that we found. Qemal is the dad’s name. His wife is Merita and their daughter is Sara. Sara was in a really bad makinë (car) accident when she was little and is handicapped now. We found out that she really liked music and so we said the next time, we’d sing a song for her and she got so excited. But this family has definitely been prepared. Or at least Merita has. We were talking about what usually happens when we meet with people and we had said that as we meet with her, we will talk about baptism because that is how we show our Heavenly Father that we are willing to keep his commandments for the rest of our lives and she can choose to be baptized or not. She is orthodox right now and has already been baptized so she asked me why she would need to be baptized again. And let’s just say that I murdered the answer, but she was very humble and she understood what I was trying to say. And she agreed to meet with us 2 or 3 times a week! We are really excited to see this family progress together.

Well I better go write Dad and Lindsey now. Mom, I love you! Thanks for your e-mails every week and all your support! You are always in my prayers.

-Elder Swenson